


exorcize my mind

by naimeria



Category: Dragon Ball
Genre: Angst, Character Study, Introspection, Other, Post-Cell Games Saga, Survivor Guilt
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-09-16
Updated: 2016-09-16
Packaged: 2018-08-15 09:13:41
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,478
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/8050657
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/naimeria/pseuds/naimeria
Summary: your mind exists somewhere altogether different; it lives in a world where feelings simply cannot be defined by words.

 
(gohan and piccolo talk about cell, his father, and the nature of existence.)





	exorcize my mind

Tucked away in a thicket of trees, he lets himself feel the loss. There’s a lake, and stars peppering the blanket sky, and all the nocturnal animals are flitting from tree to tree. He’s brought his _ki_ down low, a simmering warmth tangled up with the rest of the life around him. Everything ignores him as part of the scenery, nothing to be bothered with, and Gohan takes small pleasure in it.

He isn’t crying. It’s deeper than that, a soul-sucking ache a child should never have to face. Maybe this will scar, an ugly thing he can learn to live with, or maybe he’ll feel it forever. He’d deserve it.

Knees tucked against his chest, he feels delicate; like paper, waiting to be ripped, aching to blow away. Still enough space to be marked, changed, claimed by someone’s thoughts. His father’s last words were to push him, to tell him he was good enough, to make him strong. Strong enough to kill, to save others.

It’s selfish to want his father’s last words to be of love. Gohan knows this.

He has all the time in the world now to wonder about his origins. If the burn at the base of his spine, the pull of power that sets his ribs alight is something all Saiyans feel, or if it’s something more. He can’t ask his father, won’t ask Vegeta. Maybe deep down he doesn’t want to know.

Son Gohan doesn’t need any more confirmation that he isn’t really human.

Something’s coming at him on the peppered horizon, a steadied and unhurried pace that he feels for a time, letting it wash over him like waves over sand. The _ki_ he feels is familiar and soothing, so he waits, thinks about forcing his limbs to unbend, but can’t bring himself to move. He counts blades of grass, watches a spider crawl atop one, questions their importance in the grand scheme of things, and wonders when he will be given a chance to fall in love with living.

Piccolo lands in the trees behind him and approaches slowly. Gohan feels like a wounded animal, treated with caution to avoid being provoked to flee. He would care more if it were anyone but Piccolo.

“Hey, kid,” he says, and there’s no pity, no sympathy, no apology. There’s some kind of emotion in the words, though, enough to give Gohan pause and look up at his mentor. Maybe he’s just tired. Maybe they all are.

He moves to rise, because he won’t give Piccolo a sign of disrespect, even if he does want the ground to swallow him and never spit him back out. A firm hand stops his progress beyond getting his feet under him, strong fingers buried in dark hair. Gohan freezes, and Piccolo looks down at him.

“You okay?” It’s after a long pause, and it becomes once more apparent that Piccolo still isn’t very good at any emotion that could be labeled as human, but he’s getting there.

Gohan nods, because he doesn’t really know what else to do. The question sits in the cool nighttime air until Piccolo sits, hand going from Gohan’s hair to his shoulder, then to the grass between them.

It’s always weird, seeing this side of him. Gohan knows better than anyone of Piccolo’s compassion, but it’s always something borne of violence, brought to life in desperation. His hand on Gohan’s chest as he shakes and shivers from the freezing cold and the pain of having the life sucked out of you, the view of his back as waves of energy promising death hit him and no one else. Moments like this, where he knows Gohan’s hurting, and comes down to see it for himself.

Does Piccolo know Gohan sees him as a father, too?

He looks down at the grass again, and his eyes burn. He never knew there were so many flavors of guilt.

“You’re overthinking this,” Piccolo says, voice like rocks on dirt.

Gohan thinks again of the spider, of how easily it can be crushed. How strong it’s web can be, if given the chance. “I have the power in me,” he says, and his voice is low and frail with disuse and all the emotions that are threatening to bleed from him, “this rage, and I let it control me.” He stares at his hands, loose on his knees. “I let him push, and people got hurt. I had the chance, and I didn’t take it.”

Piccolo’s frowning. Gohan doesn’t have to look at him to know.

“Cell killed your father. You had no hand in that.”

Then why do they shake? Why does he imagine sunlight and energy and lightning instead of blood and muscle and bone? Why, when he sleeps, does he only hear Frieza’s laugh, Cell’s voice in the dark? “I gave him the chance.”

“Gohan,” Piccolo says, and his tone brooks no interruption, no argument. Gohan turns to his old mentor, and he realizes he’s crying, silent and hot. The urge to bow his head and hide the tears, those that Piccolo tried to beat out of him as a child, is curbed by Piccolo’s gaze.

“Your father trusted you with what no one else could do.” Their arms touch, the contact small reassurance, and Gohan gives a shaky breath. “He is a Saiyan. Battle is what they know. Your father was raised on this planet, but it’s instinct for their species.”

“What does that make me?”

It’s small, barely heard. Piccolo looks to him out of the corner of his eye.

“It makes you half of your father.”

Gohan doesn’t know whether he should feel pride or grief. “I don’t like to fight.” It feels like a surrender.

“I know.”

Piccolo makes no move to comfort, but the words ease some dam in Gohan’s chest, making breathing something he can handle. For a beat, he thinks Piccolo is done, but he shifts again, and Gohan doesn’t look to know his mentor’s gaze is on the sky. “I took you because I thought you were different. Stronger than the Saiyans, strong enough to keep my enemies at bay. They were your enemies, too, and I used that as a shield. I’d planned to use you and your strength for my own means.”

Piccolo looks down, then, at him. “I wasn’t wrong. You are the strongest person I’ve known. I once thought I could find pride in knowing some of that came from that year. It comes from you, and no one else. You’ve been shaped into the person you are, but that power comes from you.”

“My dad showed me how to ascend,” Gohan says, when Piccolo lets the silence hang. “The ones that almost killed me made me stronger. You taught me how to fight.” He doesn’t need to say it: _I’m nothing in the scheme of myself. I’ve been molded for war, and don’t know who I am._

Piccolo shakes his head. “You are strong, Gohan. Your humanity makes you strong.”

“Then why is my father dead?”

It should be an accusation. He wants to scream it, rip at his flesh until his blood answers what his mind cannot. Am I an animal, brought to my baser instincts? Am I a boy with the sun trapped beneath layers of loss and fear?

“Because he loves you.”

“It’s my fault.” He takes Piccolo’s words as the confirmation he knew was coming.

“By that logic, Gohan, it is as much mine. It is Vegeta’s. It is Trunk’s and Krillin’s and the whole damn world’s. It’s Goku’s.”

Gohan bristles, but Piccolo looks at him, and Gohan lets the anger simmering in his gut, awakened for the first time since, fizzle out. Piccolo waits until he's in control of himself before continuing. “We all make mistakes. We live, and we make mistakes. Vegeta gave Cell the android. Your father gave Cell the means to heal himself. That is the Saiyan nature: the challenge of the fight. You saw your first glimpse of that, when you ascended. I saw it in your eyes.

“Do not misunderstand my point, Gohan.” Piccolo’s words turn harsh. “No one knew the lengths that your strength would go, least of all your father. You are the only one to have taken that step, and you are the first born with human and Saiyan blood.”

Little fists clench on knees. He understands, but it feels like an excuse, and it doesn’t assuage the guilt. Maybe it’s not supposed to. 

“What do I do now?” Like many years before, he turns and looks up at his mentor, the person he never hesitates to call uncle, teacher, second father.

Piccolo doesn’t look away. “You live. Make your own choices.”

A firefly lands on Gohan’s hand. They don’t speak again, waiting for the dew to touch their cheeks and shoulders, and eventually, he dreams.

 

 

**Author's Note:**

> pastimes include inferring character development from a series that doesn't put enough thought into growth and actual human emotion
> 
> title and summary from bastille's _send them off!_.


End file.
